Every time I think about butterflies (and especially these butterfly cupcakes) I think of my brother when Jim and I were probably 5 and 6 years old. I’m older by 13 months and (so I’ve been told) Jim did whatever my sister or I said.

Let me set the scene by saying there was a staircase going up the against the outer wall of my parents’ home with an oversized window at the top looking down the street. My mother loved that window because it gave a lot of light to the upstairs hallway and stairs. She had a valance over the window and that was all.

Every night after dinner my father would pop my brother and I in the tub and this one night he got a phone call. Jim and I got old or bored waiting for him to come back so we decided to get out. We were drying with the towels and one of us, and I’m guessing me, suggested that we become butterflies with our towels. There we were, naked as jaybirds, running up and down the hallway, flapping our towels like butterfly wings. It was the best fun.

We got tired of that and got dressed into our PJs and went to read each other a story. No, neither of us could read but not being able to do something never stopped me from pretending I could. That was the end of the story, or so we thought. Dad came up, read us (another) story and we went to sleep.

The next day my mother called Jim and I into the kitchen and her face looked like she’d lived on beets all her life and nothing else. I’ve never seen a woman with a face that red.

“What were you two doing upstairs last night?”

Jim and I looked at each other and laughed and rather proudly said, “We played butterflies!” I was pretty sure we were going to get complimented on putting ourselves to bed quietly. No, that wasn’t it.

It was the first spanking I ever remember. It was all my fault that I had dragged my younger brother down the track to depravity. Mrs. Jolin who lived next door watched the whole thing through her window and wanted my mother to know how naughty her children were.

When I was making these cupcakes, every few minutes I’d think about this story and I’d crack up laughing. These cupcakes are really easy to make, don’t need any icing – just a dollop of whipped cream and dessert is done.

You can ‘butterfly’ any cupcake by cutting a circle out of the top of the cupcake, slice off the inside bit to make it flat, cut it in two to make two wings and sit them in the whipped cream. See? Easy!